A Pirate's Life For Me
by romancing-the-moon
Summary: Olivia searches for control after her car crash in A New Day In An Old Town.


She can't quite stand properly. They gave her a cane and weakly physiotherapy appointments in the hospital that she's supposed to find time to make for. Peter offers to spend the night, to make sure she gets on alright; if there's an emergency, he would be right there. He realizes that he's babbling when she smiles up at him.

"I'll be fine Peter. Thank you." She pats his face affectionately and he smiles, nodding.

"I'm just a text message away!" he turns to leave, walking backwards down the street with his arms outstretched, cell phone latched to his palm. She smiles again, and waves, bending only her fingers. She appreciates Peter and his overprotectiveness but all she wants is a hot shower: burn the hospital smell off of her skin and our of her hair. Peter's presence might make things more awkward than they ought to be.

The stairs give her more problems than she had originally anticipated, even with the cane, and suddenly she wishes that she hadn't been so quick as to dismiss Peter and his services. She's somewhat convinced that he would have been more than happy to help her out of her clothes and into the shower. Somewhat. You can never be too certain about these things.

It's difficult and painful, yet somehow she manages to remove her clothes, only wincing slightly as she peels the polyester from her leg. It's turned a colour she's never seen before: green mixed with blue and black and purple, a beautiful backwards rainbow. It's painful to look at. The shower's water will hit the bruise, cuts, broken bones, and she's hesitant to add more pain to her life. She throws her clothes to the ground and marches off to the bathroom , leaving her cane by the bedside in a private act of defiance.

She doesn't bother with cold; the room fills with steam - white and thick and she can hardly breathe. Soon she can't differentiate the pain in her leg from the pain on her shoulders, her arms, her back, the top of her head... something escapes her mouth before she can stop it. It's a foreign, unfamiliar sound she can't recognize, one made out of total despair when she's fine, really she's fine...

The weight becomes too much for her weak, damaged, broken leg and suddenly she's at the bottom of the tub on all fours, unable to distinguish the boiling hot water from the tears that wont stop falling. Charlie told her she was going to be fine. He lied, damn it, he must have...

Had she had her gun, been in a normal state of mind, she probably would have shot who ever it was that turned the water off. Instead, she let who ever it was wrap a towel around her shaking, red shoulders and lift her, foreign fingers under her arm pits, up and out of the tub. She leans against the human crane even though it's a considerably smaller frame than her own.

"It's okay... It's okay..." it keeps saying and she recognizes the voice. It's soft and light and comforting and strangely disarming. The flesh crane moves her on to the bed and it's quick to wrap the comforter around her and is busy drying her face and hair with the discarded towel. It's only after the flesh crane wipes her eyes gently that she realizes who this human crane is.

"Hey!" she says brightly when she realizes that Olivia sees who she is.

"Hey," Olivia answers sheepishly, rather embarrassed that she's not strong enough for this.

"How are you?"

Olivia smiles a bright, happy, beautiful smile that almost masks the hollowed look in her green eyes.

"I'm fine."

She laughs a little and breaks eye contact: even she doesn't believe the lie.

Olivia shakes her head and crumples against her shoulder, grasping at the dark flesh she feels beneath her fingers. She's hanging on so tight her nails dig into the skin, drawing blood from the slices her nails make.

"... Astrid...?" she gasps and despite her size, Astrid latches on to Olivia and lets her cling as tightly as she needs to; she refuses to wince as Olivia's short nails ravaged her skin.

"Hey. Hey, it's okay. It's okay." She takes Olivia's head in her hands and looks directly into her eyes. "Olivia," she says firmly. "Olivia. You're fine! You're going to be fine. Do you hear me?" Astrid searches her face fervently for any sign of comprehension. Olivia nods; tears roll off of her nose and on to the blanket that covers her naked lap.

Everything is a blur: _I don't remember ... my leg... Peter, my gun, Peter... Peter, what's wrong with my leg...? I don't remember... that nurse... that nurse, Peter... go get that bitch... They're shutting us down... This cane will help you walk until we can get you into physiotherapy... Peter... I'm fine... you don't have to stay... _

She falls into Astrid, instinct, she would later blame, lips crashing on lips and she fights for some control, some sense that she really is okay, as everyone keeps insisting upon. She's fine. So she proves it to herself, to Peter, to the Junior Agent beneath her, to every damn person who would dare to wonder. Like a hissing cockroach, she molts the skin that encases her flesh; she crawls all over the sweet brown flesh beneath her own and that flesh responds in a most promising way.

Instead of protesting, instead of muffled gasps that list thousands of reasons why not, Astrid lets Olivia take her, because, she is fine, after all. She soon takes the smaller woman and Astrid falls on her back; Olivia's naked breasts press into Astrid's and the only witness was a half inch Lego pirate sitting on the night stand that Ella had given her aunt on a far more better day than this.

She still has grime and dirt and elements of the car crash written all over her body. Astrid has her back in the shower, scrubbing her back with an old luffa and something of Rachel's that smells like papaya. Walter would have been pleased.

Olivia leans her head against the tiled wall as Astrid gathers up her wet hair in a ball of frothy shampoo, working out all of the dirt and sweat and grime that's accumulated itself on her scalp.

Olivia moans softly beneath the pulsating water and Astrid immediately recognizes the sound: gently, she applies more pressure, more force and Olivia lets out a groan. Astrid smoothes her skin with a soft wash cloth as the last of the dirt washes down the drain.

"When I was a high school student, I was having some problems."

"Oh yeah?" Olivia has her damp head resting on Astrid's naked shoulder; their hands intertwine, fingers pumping in and out between each other's.

"Yeah, it wasn't good."

Olivia frowns. "That's not good."

"No, it wasn't." Astrid picks up a pen - a blue ink, ballpoint Bic pen. The kind college students hoard and one of the millions that are lost in houses and offices over the years.

"What did you do?" She allows Astrid to take her left hand in her right, flipping it over, palms face up.

"Kept reminding myself that it was going to be okay until I believed it." Blue ink turns navy on snow-white skin.

"Hey! That tickles!"

"Sorry," Astrid says apologetically, but doesn't stop her writing.

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Did you start to believe it?"

She kisses Olivia's head affectionately. "Yes, I did. Eventually."

Olivia smiles and flexes her arm after Astrid releases it.

"I'm glad," she says sleepily. She kisses Astrid's arm, nuzzling into the crook of her shoulder.

"Me too."

In the end, the two were asleep wrapped up in damp flesh, dried off by a down duvet. The Lego man kept a watchful eye, reading the man-made tattoo as they slept: I'M OKAY in blue ink on snow-white skin.


End file.
